Sunday 24th August 2014 - Phase 1 of the Breakout Complete
35:18.83S 174:07.34E Sunday 24th August 2014 – Phase 1 of the Breakout Complete The watermaker men came as promised on Tuesday and fitted it all back in working order. So, we were ready to leave on Wednesday morning but chose not to because the weather was forecast to become hideous imminently. It did just that with very strong northerly winds – even in the marina they reputedly reached 50 knots - so the chances of getting north in that lot didn’t look good. However life was forecast to get a lot better by Thursday afternoon and remain sunny with winds from the southern sector for several days. So, we decanted the rest of the stuff from our flat on Thursday, took Lindsay and Raewyn out to dinner as some sort of very inadequate ‘thank you’ for all they have done for us and moved aboard, with most of the stuff re-stowed, for the night. That put Arnamentia properly down to her raised waterline. At about 1530 on Friday we slipped our berth in Gulf Harbour marina – not without a little trepidation with a pretty gusty F5-6 pinning us in there – and made it safely out to sea. The
plan was to sail overnight to Opua – the northernmost port in NZ from which
yachts can clear out and about 130NM by sea from It was great to be at sea again and to see Arnamentia doing something other than exercising her well-developed talents as a cash sink. There were one or two electronic teasers that puzzled us for a bit (when agents take stuff like plotters away to fiddle with them they always give them back with all the settings reversed to default. And, of course there is no way that you can remember what you set to what or that it needed setting in the first place. Chaps may even be forced to refer to a user manual. Steady! Moreover, we were visited by an irritating gremlin that stopped our AIS from working for most of the trip. That is scarcely a drama in the South Pacific, but, just as mysteriously as he appeared, he disappeared as we approached Opua. So, apart from a couple of tiny things to fix, it looks as if everything is sort of working. If that statement isn’t a hostage to fortune, nothing is. Lovely
though the wind was, one was left in no doubt that it was coming from the south.
The fleece-lined Baby-Gro was the
least of the requirements. Whoa –
that was chilly. The plan now is to
leave Opua for Savusavu, in Saturday evening was spent at the Opua Cruising Club watching the second
Rugby Test Match of the Bledisloe Cup (Oz/NZ) at Today will be taken up with admin of one sort or another. The car, having been collected from Gulf Harbour yesterday (thank God for busses and Raewyn) is being put somewhere safe, there is a little last-minute provisioning to do and there are a couple of minor fixes to put in place on board (as ever). Then, with any luck at all, we’ll be outta here. |